Under the name of Affected by the Santa Cruz Trail, a new association has been born, whose main objective is that the market does not return to its original location, that of José Manuel Guimerá street and adjacent. And it is that this group of neighbors, the majority with homes in the area, defend that with the transfer of the Rastro, forced by the pandemic, “all the neighbors were freed from noisy Sundays”, a day of rest that for them “meant not finding a place to park from Saturday afternoon, not being able to go out on Sunday morning or noise from five in the morning until the end of it, around two in the afternoon, in addition to merchants opposing the cleaning and removal of the municipal beaconing until 8:00 p.m. or 9:00 p.m., in which silence must prevail to rest, listening to cleaning vehicles and beaconing collection making noise derived from its size.
For these neighbors, the new location, which they say is only one street away from the last position of José Manuel Guimerá, “has not been an economic disaster for merchants.” They criticize that the return of the Rastro to its original location, something to which the City Council agreed with the vendors so that they would accept the transfer, is done without the consent of the residents of the area, the main affected, they defend, of the activity carried out by the flea market
They clarify that they are not against the Rastro, that they believe that “it should continue making history in the city”, but they understand that this can be done “without harming anyone”.